Sudhir Papers and InfoPrint have invested Rs 5.5m in a demo centre for the graphic arts market in Bengaluru.

The site is located at the Karnataka Offset Printers Association’s Technology Centre which is being built by the Karnataka association at a cost of Rs 7-crore.The 2,500 sqft Sudhir Gupta Innovation Centre will be staffed by a team which will offer pre-sales support and training. The site was officially inaugurated by InfoPrint’s Rohan Vaidya, general manager of Indian and South Asia and Chris Reid, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific. Industry luminaries like A Balachandra of Rajhans Enterprises and Nagsundar of Geetanjali Graphics attended the event.

Opening the demo centre is one of several initiatives the firm is using to get closer to its print customers as it prepares for the Indian graphic arts business to exceed the 150-million pages per month mark.

Vaidya stated: "Through this strategic alliance with Sudhir Papers, InfoPrint aims to enable customers and business partners from the region to have a better understanding of TransPromo, RFID, personalised mailing and educational publishing."

Varun Gupta, the director of Sudhir Papers, said, "Besides the executive styled classroom, the site’s other initiatives is to get closer to the customers in the digital market and provide hands-on orientation on the cutsheet InfoPrint 2190. We will offer technology and application resources to the industry."

The centre is made up of InfoPrint customers and users of rival machines and is designed to ensure the firm’s activities are targeted to meet customer needs and foster customer loyalty and acquisition in the longer term. InfoPrint will soon be launching the Pro C900. To date there are 50 InfoPrint 5000s installed all over the world. Only recently, EIH has installed four IBM-InfoPrint 5000 colour printing in multiple numbers in Manesar as well as in Chennai.